The way Vaibhav Suryavanshi started his Indian Premier League (IPL), who wouldn’t be impressed? The fact that a 14-year-old hit Shardul Thakur over covers for a six on his first ball just speaks volumes about his talent and potential. Former India coach Ravi Shastri was mighty impressed as well.
“I think the first shot he played, that would have taken everyone’s breath away,” Shastri said on The ICC Review.
No judgement on Vaibhav Suryavanshi from Ravi Shastri
But the former India head coach isn’t ready to pass judgements just yet. At 14, Vaibhav’s fragile. He doesn’t know himself or his game yet. He’s got power. But his technique and temperament will take time to set in place. Shastri feels that we’ll know much about the southpaw when we see how well he recovers after failing.
“But he’s young, so I would say just let him play a bit because it’s at that age, there’s bound to be failure as well. It’s how he handles failure,” Shastri added.
After he went after Bhuvneshwar Kumar, he saw him getting some chin music. He looked out of sorts against these well-directed short balls. And didn’t seem to have plans. It was just a careless hack, one after the other. And that’s completely natural. He is just 14. He’ll need time to develop his game. But now that he’s failed once, it’ll be interesting to see whether it gets to his head or he just lets it go.
“People will come up with new things. There’ll be lots of short stuff thrown at him. When you tonk someone’s first ball for six, then you show no mercy. Then you don’t care whether he’s 14 years old or 12 years old or 20 years old. The menu is the same that you dish out. So, he’ll have to get used to that, and once we see him handling that, then you can make a proper judgement,” Shastri concluded.
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